Whilst today's mobile telephone networks have undoubtedly enhanced our ability to communicate with each other, there are several aspects of their functionality that could be improved in order to further enhance our ability to efficiently communicate with each other. One aspect that could be improved is the ability for a user of a mobile telephone to readily determine what another mobile telephone user is doing without having to communicate directly (for instance, speak) with the user of the mobile telephone. For example, it would be advantageous if the user of a mobile telephone could program the telephone network (or their mobile telephone) to provide information that informs parties calling the mobile telephone that the user thereof is currently in a meeting without having to communicate directly with the user. At present, the user of the mobile telephone would either have to speak directly with the calling party to inform them that they are in a meeting, or the user of the mobile telephone would have to engage in SMS messaging to inform the calling party that they are in a meeting.
Another aspect of mobile telephone networks that could be improved is their ability to allow a person to easily join a group of people and communicate efficiently with them. At present the person has to go through the rather cumbersome task of organising or arranging a time to communicate with the group and establishing a conference call between the members of the group.